2005: The End? - October

By October 2005 I'd more or less got out the habit of watching Top of the Pops given it was on a Sunday night. I was more likely to be found down my local pub taking part in a music quiz. I was however still watching the music channels regularly a remember a lot of the new entries this month.

I remember kid rapper Lil Bow Wow now being an adult simply named Bow Wow and making a record that I particularly liked. In fact it's good enough to be the best new entry of this month. The only other American rap record was "Gold Digger" by Kanye West, which I tried to like but didn't.

There was also a British rap record I was surprised to find myself liking which was "Shake A Leg" by Roll Deep. Tim Westwood, who only really championed American rap music seemingly found it good enough to appear in the video.

More surprises was a Ricky Martin record I actually liked, with a change in style and featuring Fat Joe. We also had a Liberty X record I didn't mind, though it was more of a Revered Run record with Liberty X singing the chorus. Even Mariah Carey had a record I didn't mind. Good production from Jermaine Dupri who also sang the chorus, the only bad thing about it was Mariah Carey singing the verses.

I remember finding myself enjoying some of the reggae on the music channels and one of those records was "Welcome To Jamrock" by Damian 'Jr Gong' Marley, the son of Bob Marley.

Dance music wise it was generally quite good, just lacking somewhat in quantity. The Prodigy were in the Top 40 with remixes of "Voodoo People" and "Out Of Space". The former was a drum & bass makeover which worked well but the latter was terrible and ruined the original.

The Prodigy remixers Pendulum were in the charts with their debut "Slam/Out Here" which wasn't my cup of tea. Not as bad as some of the drum & bass in the charts these days but at the time it was the commercial rubbish end.

Bob Sinclar did "Love Generation" which I would put into the a bit commercial but decent enough category. Basement Jaxx had a solid effort with "Do Your Thing" and X-Press 2 had half marks with "Give It".

We've had Erasure records in the Top 40 in 2005 longer after their commercial peak. Now it was the turn of Andy Bell with a solo record which may just as well have been and Erasure record which I mean in a good way.

The modern era has seen numerous collaborations between dance producers and pop singers and it looks like the seeds were being sewn here. There's Dannii Minogue & Soul Seekerz with "Perfection" which is anything but. Then we have the truly terrible "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" by Da Playaz & Clea, the latter being the group whose members failed to get into Girls Aloud. That was just the 2nd worst record though.

The worst was "What Hurts The Most" by Jo O'Meara. It had the same level of credibility as S Club 7 but was 100 times more boring. She never troubled the Top 40 again.

Speaking of former cheesy pop group members, we had the final Top 40 hit for Lisa Scott-Lee with "Electric". It came off the back of her MTV reality show "Totally Scott-Lee" where she decided if she failed to make the Top 10 with her next single she'd quit music. That's what happened at least solo career wise. Thinking about it, this was the show I used to watch on a Sunday night before going to the music quiz at the pub.

Whilst early 2005 brings back memories of me becoming disillusioned with modern music, this month has the opposite effect.

Here's a list of the records with the best on top, worst at the bottom and the good ones in green, OK ones in amber and rubbish ones in red (and in no particular order):

Score: 29%

Here's a look at the chart:

Well this makes me question whether the charts really did die in 2005. Whatever way you look at it we have the best month of a year that could even give some 90s charts a run for their money.